Description
Cisco’s AI Software & Platform (AISWP) team is the engine driving our transformation into an AI-native company. We are a central organization of researchers, ML engineers, and distributed systems experts dedicated to building the models, platforms, and products that integrate AI into every facet of the Cisco portfolio.
As a Distinguished Software Engineer, you will serve as a primary technical architect and strategic advisor, shaping the future of Cisco’s AI-first engineering roadmap. Your work will transcend individual projects, requiring you to navigate high-ambiguity environments to establish the long-term technical vision for Cisco’s agentic systems.
Key responsibilities:
- Define and champion the enterprise-wide technical strategy for agentic systems, including multi-agent orchestration, planning/reflection loops, and durable execution patterns that operate with hyperscale reliability.
- Negotiate critical build-versus-buy trade-offs at the executive level, influencing corporate-wide investment decisions regarding model frameworks, infrastructure roadmaps, and capability ceilings.
- Drive the adoption of industry-standard interfaces, such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), across Cisco’s broad product portfolio to create a seamless, interoperable ecosystem for AI agents that can communicate across tools and across vendors.
- Establish and enforce rigorous engineering standards and reference architectures for AI, mentoring Principal and Senior staff to elevate the technical bar across the entire AI organization.
- Personally lead the technical resolution of the most complex, high-risk "black box" challenges, prototyping and proving out breakthrough methodologies before company-wide commitment.
- Own the security posture of agentic systems, including defenses against prompt injection, scoped tool-permissioning, and sandboxing for autonomous actions that carry write access to production systems.
Minimum qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field with 17+ years of total software engineering experience; Master's with 14+ years; or PhD with 10+ years.
- 10+ years of specialized experience in designing and scaling distributed systems, hyperscale cloud platforms, or high-throughput data architectures.
- 5+ years in a Principal-level role (or equivalent) demonstrating sustained technical influence across multiple engineering organizations.
- Experience building and operating LLM-based production systems, including managing model lifecycle, evaluation infrastructure and security commitments.
- Prior experience designing and delivering production-grade multi-agent system.
Preferred qualifications:
- Expertise in AIOps domains, specifically event correlation, root cause analysis, and closed-loop remediation at scale.
- Deep knowledge of inference optimization techniques, including speculative decoding, KV/prefix caching, and model distillation/routing strategies.
- Recognized thought leadership in the external technical community (e.g., patents, published research in top-tier journals/conferences, or significant open-source contributions).
- Comprehensive understanding of global AI governance frameworks (e.g., NIST AI RMF, EU AI Act, ISO 42001) and experience operationalizing compliance in enterprise software.
- Demonstrated ability to negotiate technical strategy and influence outcomes with executive-level stakeholders (VP/SVP level) and external industry partners.
The starting salary range posted for this position is $293,900.00 to $406,800.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits.